You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes a day, unless you are too busy — then you should sit for an hour. ~Author Unknown

Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak. ~Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. ~Jiddhu Krishnamurti

Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought. ~Stephen Levine

Meditation has to become your heartbeat; even when you are asleep the meditation continues like an undercurrent ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Spiritual meditation is the pathway to Divinity. It is a mystic ladder which reaches from earth to heaven, from error to Truth, from pain to peace. ~James Allen

Meditation is a flower and compassion is its fragrance. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. ~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Meditation is the golden key to all the mysteries of life. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Enjoy simple things with total intensity. Just a cup of tea can be a deep meditation. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is the antidote to all the poisons of your life. It is the nourishment of your authentic nature. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The you that goes in one side of the meditation experience is not the same you that comes out the other side. ~Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

In meditation, you are calm and receptive. You are like an open door providing a kind of cross ventilation so that the air of divinity can move through you. ~Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu

At the beginning of every winter people are careful to install storm windows. These extra panes of glass protect their houses against the bitter winds. We do something very similar to protect our minds through the practice of meditation. ~Eknath Easwaran

Meditation is a valuable exercise, but eventually you have to open up your eyes and look around. ~Dan Millman

Meditation provides a way of learning how to let go. As we sit, the self we've been trying to construct and make into a nice, neat package continues to unravel. ~John Welwood

We spend a great deal of time telling God what we think should be done, and not enough time waiting in the stillness for God to tell us what to do. ~Peace Pilgrim

Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. ~Author Unknown

Meditation is not something that should be done in a particular position at a particular time. It is an awareness and an attitude that must persist throughout the day. ~Annamalai Swami

Meditation is the soul's perspective glass. ~Owen Feltham

My meditation is simple. It doesn't require any complex practices. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently. ~Osho

Meditation is silence. If you realize that you really know nothing, then you will be truly meditating. Such truthfulness is the right soil for silence. Silence is meditation. ~Yogaswami

[M]editation stills the wandering mind and establishes us forever in a state of peace. ~Muktananda

True meditation gives us, as it were, wings for flight to a higher realm and thus detaches us from terrestrial fetters. ~Paramananda

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ~Sivananda Saraswati

Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is. ~Sylvia Boorstein

Meditation is a silent heart, a peaceful mind which can make life more lovable, more livable.... ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate. ~Alan Watts

No meditation better clears the mind than to listen to the shape of the silence that surrounds us. It focuses us on the thin line between what is there and what is not there. It opens our heart to the unseen, and reminds us that the world is larger than the events that fill our days. ~Kent Nerburn, "The Eloquence of Silence," Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life, 1998

Contemplation places us in a purity and radiance which is far above our understanding. ~John of Ruysbroeck

Seek in reading and thou shalt find in meditation; knock in prayer and it shall be opened in contemplation. ~John of the Cross

To be alone and to be drunk with your own aloneness is what meditation is all about. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

One hour of contemplation surpasses sixty years of worship. ~Muhammad

Meditation is the most significant because it opens the door for all other significant things: love, prayer, God, light, music, poetry. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation, perhaps, is the only alchemy that can transform a beggar into an emperor. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

My whole effort here is to keep you as non-serious as possible, for the simple reason that meditation, all kinds of meditation, can make you too serious and that seriousness will create a spiritual disease and nothing else. Unless a meditation brings you more laughter, more joy, more playfulness, avoid it. It is not for you. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

You cannot see clearly, because you are so full of expectations, hopes, desires. Your eyes are covered with many layers of dust: you need a deep cleansing of your eyes. That's what meditation is. Let the thoughts disappear, the hopes disappear, the desires disappear. Then you have a clarity, then your eyes are perfect mirrors. Only then, in that silent state of your vision, will you know the secrets of the beyond. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The practice of reflective meditation, which consists of holding certain ideas in the mind long enough to enable them to form emotional connections, tends to break up the crust of habit and to create a new will. ~Walter M. Horton

Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority—to the very innermost shrine of your being. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation makes you innocent, it makes you childlike. In that state, miracles are possible. That state is pure magic. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

[W]hen the mind is really absent, in that silence, in that unlimited space, your potential starts glowing, radiating, flowering. Suddenly you are full of cherry blossoms, a new presence, a new fragrance. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquility, nor is it attempting to be a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. ~Chögyam Trungpa

If you learn to go beyond the jabbering of your mind, and can go to the deeper aspects of your consciousness, then body, breath, and mind will not come in your way. ~Swāmī Rāma

Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give an useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books....
~William Cowper, "The Winter Walk at Noon"

As meditation flowers, you find that on one hand truth has revealed to you all its mysteries and on the other blissfulness is showering all its treasures on you. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Wisdom happens through meditation, and bliss also happens through meditation. Both the flowers bloom on the same branch. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Once you start drinking a little of meditativeness, a little of love, you start growing wings. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

When they go fishing, it is not really fish they are after. It is a philosophic meditation. ~E.T. Brown

If you ask Zen people they will say; tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Mind only thinks, meditation lives. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is to know oneself as one is. It is see our real face with out any mask. ~Author Unknown

Meditation is simplicity itself. One is to just let go, nothing special is supposed to happen. ~Author Unknown

In meditation you are not unconscious, you are conscious—more conscious than ever. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at extraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-in-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. ~Peter Matthiessen

Those who miss meditation miss the whole dance of life. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent—not even a flicker of thought—and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Just a little relaxation, just a little looking inwards, and the doors of immense potentialities open up. You are no more a beggar. Without conquering the world you have conquered the whole universe. Just conquer yourself. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

A man of meditation functions differently. Whatever profession he chooses, it does not matter. He will bring to his profession some quality of sacredness. He may be making shoes, or he may be cleaning the roads, but he will bring to his work some quality, some grace, some beauty, which is not possible without samādhi. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there—buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day. ~Deepak Chopra

Sleep is the best meditation. ~Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Meditation is the only cure for all sicknesses that man is prone to; a single medicine. And I should remind you that the word meditation and medicine come from the same root. Medicine for the body and meditation for the soul. They both bring health. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Medicine heals the body, meditation heals the soul. Medicine is outwardly, meditation is inwardly. And man is whole only when medicine and meditation are together in deep harmony. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

A very sensitive person in this stupid world is bound to become mad.... Only meditation can save him from becoming mad. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Love is the flowering of meditation. Meditation brings many treasures; perhaps love is the greatest roseflower that grows on the bush of meditation. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

You have to put aside your ideology. Howsoever beautiful it looks, howsoever systematic it looks, howsoever philosophical you have made and decorated it, you have to put it aside and see within. That's the whole method of meditation, awareness, watchfulness. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

[M]editation is not just being silent—that is only one part of it.... [I]t has to be creative. And when a poetry comes out of your inner silences, or a painting, it has a flavor which is not of this world. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The more intense the nature of a man, the more readily will he find meditation, and the more successfully will he practice it. ~James Allen

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit. ~Jeremy Taylor

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind. ~Michel de Montaigne

Passing through the fire of meditation, everything that is not your authentic reality, everything that is borrowed, will be burned away. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is the way to individuality. It makes you a light unto yourself. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious. Talk less, listen only to the essential, be telegraphic in talking and listening. If you talk less, if you listen less, slowly slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. Don't go on reading all kinds of nonsense. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing....
~T.S. Eliot

He sat thus, lost in meditation, thinking Om, his soul as the arrow directed at Brahman. ~Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is. ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

A racing mind that reacts sensitively to little things indicates thinking that has lost its spiritual strength. Meditation restores that power. ~Author Unknown

The supreme bliss that pulsates in the wake of meditation is your pure essence. ~Swami Muktananda

Awareness is a flower that blooms but never dies. ~Author Unknown

Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively. ~Sharon Salzberg

A jeweler could meditate by envisioning that everything is as pure and radiant as shimmering gold; a winemaker might picture herself as distilling bliss from the grapes of experience; a shoemaker could imagine that he was sewing the leather of passion with the thread of freedom to produce shoes of enlightenment. ~Miranda Shaw

Before embarking on important undertakings, sit quietly, calm your senses and thoughts, and meditate deeply. You will then be guided by the great creative power of Spirit. ~Paramahansa Yogananda

Meditation is neither of the body nor of the mind, but belongs to the third within you—your being. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

There are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to fall—not falling in love. But just a quality of lovingness, not only to human beings. As your meditation deepens, your lovingness will start spreading beyond humanity to animals, to trees, even to the rocks, to the mountains. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Don't just do something - sit there! ~Author Unknown

Meditation is the art of staying in this present moment. A sleepy person either lives in the past moment or is dreaming about the future life. But a meditator stays in this present moment and is alert about his thoughts and actions. ~Author Unknown

We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us. ~Thomas Merton

Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is not something you do once and you are done with. It is something that is like breathing, like blood circulating. It is not that once the blood has circulated it is finished, once you breathe there is no more need of it. No, you have to breathe and you have to go on meditating; every moment you will need it. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

[T]he peace of mind that we get from meditation does not fade away. It lasts for good in some corner of the inmost recesses of our aspiring heart. ~Sri Chinmoy

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. ~Alan Watts

The words were unexpected, but so incisively true. So much of prayer is like that—an encounter with a truth that has sunk to the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to be elevated into the realm of sacredness. ~Sue Monk Kidd

Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. Return to the root and you will find Meaning. ~Jianzhi Sengcan

There is no necessity for a technique or formula for meditation. Inner feeling, or inner knowing, is the silent voice of inspiration. ~Walter Russell

Meditation is to get out of your psychosis and to get out of your neurosis; it is simply to slip out of them. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation. ~Jetsun Milarepa

Untrained warriors are soon killed on the battlefield; so also persons untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace are quickly riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness in active life. ~Paramahansa Yogananda

Meditation is simply seeing reality and acknowledging it with bare honesty. ~Bo Lozoff

The spirit of meditation is the combating of self-willed thinking—it is a combat against the weight of one's feelings. ~Hakuin Ekaku

The act of meditation is being spacious. ~Sogyal Rinpoche

Meditation is a journey without movement. In the external world you have to move in order to go ahead, in meditation you don't move, yet you attain. ~Swāmī Rāma

Meditation is listening to the Divine within. ~Edgar Cayce

Experience yourself in silence. ~Erich Schiffmann

Meditating means bringing the mind back to something again and again. Thus, we all meditate, but unless we direct it in some way, we meditate on ourselves and on our own problems, reinforcing our self-clinging. ~Yeshe Dorje

Meditation is not sitting and fidgeting, daydreaming, worrying, or fantasizing. It means watching, calmly observing the mind itself. Calm observation makes the mind itself calmer. The calmness of the mind creates power to go deeper and deeper into the beds of samskaras, into all the latent memories and impressions that daily provoke our habits and personalities. However, by calmly and very quietly going to the samskaras and observing them they are burnt away; they bubble to the surface and dissipate. This is the process of purification. It is a very powerful practice, and an essential one. Meditation is the exact method of becoming aware of who you are. It is the fundamental training for knowing your inner world. ~Swāmī Rāma

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer. ~Dean Koontz

Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you—silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

It is just like dust gathers on the mirror; every day you have to clean it. On the mirror of your mind dust gathers, dust of experience: it becomes knowledge. Clean it. That's why every day meditation is needed. Meditation is nothing but cleaning the mirror of your mind. Clean it continuously! If you can clean it every moment of your life, then there is no need to sit separately for meditation. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Asanas attune the body to meditation, just as a guitar is tuned before a performance. ~Author Unknown

[M]ental peace is not meditation. Meditation is the flight beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with mental peace. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Everything can become a meditation if you live it totally and intensely. And then your life becomes whole. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Yoga practitioners advise the times around sunrise and sunset, well before eating a meal, as the best time for yoga and meditation practice. The science of biometeorology (the study of natural forces on human and animal life) tells us that the sun has a tremendous impact upon the lives of plants, animals, and human beings. Even our blood chemistry changes with the rising and setting of the sun! Therefore, there may be a chemical basis for the thousands of years of belief, in every spiritual tradition, that to meditate and pray at sunrise and sunset is somehow more effective, more auspicious. ~Vimala Schneider McClure, A Woman's Guide to Tantra Yoga

Somehow the ancient yogis knew what scientists today are telling us—that the entire universe is moving. Nothing is ever solid or still. Everything that exists pulsates, creating a rhythmic vibration that the ancient yogis acknowledged with the sound of Om. We may not always be aware of this sound in our daily lives, but we can hear it in the rustling of the autumn leaves, the waves on the shore, the inside of a seashell.
Chanting Om allows us to recognize our experience as a reflection of how the whole universe moves—the setting sun, the rising moon, the ebb and flow of the tides, the beating of our hearts. As we chant Om, it takes us for a ride on this universal movement, through our breath, our awareness, and our physical energy, and we begin to sense a bigger connection that is both uplifting and soothing.
~Cyndi Lee, "Yoga 101: A Beginner's Guide to Practice, Meditation, and the Sutras," YogaJournal.com, 2014 October 7th

When you meditate you have to try to quiet and calm the mind. There should be no thought within the mind. Right now you feel that if you can cherish twenty ideas at a time, then you are the wisest man on earth. The more thoughts that enter into our minds, the more clever we feel we are. But in the spiritual life it is not like that. If consciously we can make the mind calm and quiet, we feel that a new creation dawns inside us. ~Sri Chinmoy

Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it. Mind is only a machine. You are not. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is not growth of the ego, it is death of the ego. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

[I]t can feel as if the entire body has dropped away or has become transparent, as if its substance were in some way erased. It can feel as if there is nothing but breath flowing freely across all the boundaries of the body. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

A good meditation, even when it is interrupted by occasional nodding, is much more beneficial than many outward religious exercises. ~Johannes Tauler

If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts. ~Alan Cohen

Whenever you try to dictate the outcome of your meditation you negate its most wondrous benefit—the pleasure of simply being. ~Paul Wilson

Mindfulness is about falling awake rather than asleep. ~Shamash Alidina

An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous in such a high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment. ~Jane Austen, Persuasion

This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions. ~Paul Brunton

To me the greatest problem with humanity is that they don't know anything of meditation. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that's true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes. ~Peter McWilliams

That's what I call meditation. You simply stand aloof and just see the mind disappearing, like a cloud on a faraway horizon, leaving the sky clean and pure. And in that state arises your consciousness in its full glory, in its full celebration. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. It looks very serious, looks gloomy, has something of the church in it, looks as if it is only for people who are dead, or almost dead, who are gloomy, serious, have long faces, who have lost festivity, fun, playfulness, celebration.... A really meditative person is playful: life is fun for him.... He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious. He is relaxed. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and helpless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you just never noticed.... So don't let this realization unsettle you. It is a milestone actually, a sign of real progress. ~Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

Modern man is too impatient and wants to master the art of meditation immediately. ~Swāmī Rāma

[S]tand aside and watch the working of the divine power in yourself. ~Sri Aurobindo

Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. ~Anne D. LeClaire

The very essence of meditation is to be so silent that there is no stirring of thoughts in you, that words don't come between you and reality, that the whole net of words falls down, that you are left alone. This aloneness, this purity, this unclouded sky of your being is meditation. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

[T]hat is the true function of meditation: to create a space in you where you can be rich, infinitely rich, utterly peaceful, absolutely ecstatic. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

When you are in deep meditation, you feel a great serenity, a joy that is unknown to you, a watchfulness that is a new guest. Soon this watchfulness will become the host. The day the watchfulness becomes the host, it remains twenty-four hours with you. And out of this watchfulness, whatever you do has a wisdom in it. Whatever you do shows a clarity, a purity, a spontaneity, a grace. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The process of meditation does not take you to some new world; it only introduces you to the world where you have been for lives upon lives. The process of meditation does not add anything to you; it only takes away what is wrong, cuts it away, sheds it off. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is the only magic that can help you to be free from the mind, can help you to be free from yourself, your past and all the burden of the past. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation does not answer the questions of the mind, but it dissolves the very mind which creates many questions and confusion in our life. ~Author Unknown

Through meditation one discovers one's own light. That light you can call your soul, your self, your God—whatsoever word you choose—or you can remain just silent because it has no name. It is a nameless experience, tremendously beautiful, ecstatic, utterly silent, but it gives you the taste of eternity, of timelessness, of something beyond death. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The meditation that gives you immediate joy or continuous joy is the best meditation for you. Everyone will not have the same meditation. Your meditation will not suit me, my meditation will not suit you. You like a certain food, I don't like it. You are right in your own way I am right in my own way. ~Sri Chinmoy

With meditation I found a ledge above the waterfall of my thoughts. ~Mary Pipher

If you want to possess things—money; if you want to possess yourself—meditation. And if you possess yourself, money loses all meaning. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

There is only one meditation—the rigorous refusal to harbor thoughts. ~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Your mind is a constant traffic of thoughts, and it is always rush hour, day in, day out. Meditation means to watch the movement of thoughts in the mind. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

By and by... there are more and more gaps of silence. Through those gaps, windows will open to the divine. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

True meditation can never be done with the mind. Very often we make a mistake when we say that we are meditating in the mind and utilizing the mind. Real meditation is done in the psychic being and in the soul. It goes hand in hand with flaming aspiration, the burning flame that wants to climb up to the Highest. ~Sri Chinmoy

Meditation is that exercise of the mind by which it recalls a known truth. ~George Horne

Serenity is the flavor of meditation... ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

It is sometimes said that the first stages of the meditation process are the most difficult. The first distraction is the physical body. Sometimes there is real pain in sitting, and sometimes the ego just tries to distract us by creating itches we will want to scratch. ~Sarasvati Buhrman

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship. ~C.S. Lewis

Meditation is nothing but coming to terms with your inner emptiness: recognizing it, not escaping; living through it, not escaping; being through it, not escaping. Then suddenly the emptiness becomes the fullness of life. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Use all your suffering for meditation, and soon you will come to know that the suffering disappears because the energy starts moving inwards. It is not moving to the periphery, to the suffering, you are not feeding your suffering. It looks illogical, but this is the whole conclusion of all the mystics of the world: that you feed your suffering and you enjoy it in a subtle way, you don't want to be well—there must be some investment in it. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along. ~Allan Lokos

Through meditation, the Higher Self is seen. ~Bhagavad Gita

The kingdom of God is just behind the darkness of closed eyes, and the first gate that opens to it is your peace. ~Paramahansa Yogananda

As a mighty river which when properly harnessed by dams and canals, creates a vast reservoir of water, prevents famine and provides abundant power for industry; so also the mind, when controlled, provides a reservoir of peace and generates abundant energy for the human uplift. ~B.K.S. Iyengar

The process could be likened to relaxing on a riverbank and watching a fish leap out of the water, sparkle for a moment in the sunlight, then dive back in a graceful arc. There is no need to engage in a mental dialogue about the merits and demerits of the fish, emotionally react to the fish, or jump into the water to try to catch the fish. Once the fish is out of sight, it should also be out of mind. ~Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth—who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is a process of getting rid of the whole past, of getting rid of all diseases, of getting rid of all the pus that has gathered in you. It is painful, but it is cleansing, and there is no other way to cleanse you. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is not spacing-out or running away. In fact, it is being totally honest with ourselves. ~Kathleen McDonald

Just to be and not be a person is the whole art of meditation, the whole art of inner ecstasy. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind. ~Swami Muktananda

Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence—which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation is the breath of your soul. Just as breathing is the life of the body, meditation is the life of the soul. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation has no goal. We should not have any aim, goal, or desire for having any gains through meditation. It should be playful and natural. ~Author Unknown

When you meditate, what you actually do is to enter into a calm or still, silent mind. We have to be fully aware of the arrival and attack of thoughts. That is to say, we shall not allow any thought, divine or undivine, good or bad, to enter into our mind. Our mind should be absolutely silent. Then we have to go deep within; there we have to observe our real existence. ~Sri Chinmoy

The so-called transcendental meditation is nothing but a psychological tranquilizer. It is nothing—just a tranquilizer. It helps, but it is good for sleep, not for meditation. You can sleep well, a more calm sleep will be there. It is good, but it is not meditation at all. If you repeat a word constantly it creates a certain boredom, and boredom is good for sleep. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That's what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state. It is your state. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Words are but the shell; meditation is the kernel. ~Bahya ibn Paquda

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. ~Herman Melville, Moby Dick

When meditation releases energy in you, it will find all sorts of ways to be expressed. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

In meditation we witness our thoughts without any judgment. ~Author Unknown

Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake. A way to discover what you love. A practice to return yourself to your body when the mind medleys threaten to usurp your sanity. ~Geneen Roth

Why do we meditate? We meditate precisely because this world of ours has disappointed us and because failure looms large in our day-to-day life. We want fulfillment. We want joy, peace, bliss and perfection within and without. Meditation is the answer, the only answer. ~Sri Chinmoy

The child is naturally meditative. He is a sort of samadhi; he's coming out of the womb of existence. His life river is yset absolutely fresh, just from the source. He knows the truth, but he does not know that he knows.... His knowledge is not yet aware. It is innocent. It is simply there, as a matter of fact. And he is not separate from his knowledge; he is his knowledge. He has not mind, he has simple being. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Meditation has to be a part of our every activity. Its not sufficient to meditate for one hour and be unaware for twenty-three hours. It must become the inner thread of all our actions. ~Author Unknown

The only way to read a book of aphorisms without being bored is to open it at random and, having found something that interests you, close the book and meditate. ~Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, 1796

Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine. ~Buddha

The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide. ~Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

He that in his studies wholly applies himself to labor and exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time; and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labor and exercise, only wanders and loses himself. ~Confucius